The Wellness Trip Travelers Over 50 Actually Need Isn’t a Spa—It’s a Safari

It didn't take long to find it. Moments after dropping my bag in room No. 12 at Toka Leya Camp in Zambia, I was in an aluminum boat. My guide and I exchanged little more than pleasantries as the sun dropped low over the water; he seemed just as eager as I was to get there. Just around the bend, we came upon a mother elephant and her two calves, basking in the light. They drank from the mighty Zambezi, splashed water on their bellies, and threw mud across their backs. There it was, right in front of me: the feeling scientists now have a name for—and even a way to measure—awe.

According to research from UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, awe is the emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something so vast, our brains can't immediately make sense of it. It's what happens when the mind runs out of room to explain what it's looking at. And as we grow older, it's a feeling that may become increasingly important, making awe-inspiring trips like a safari more valuable.

In September 2020, a team led by Virginia Sturm, PhD, a professor at UC San Francisco's Memory and Aging Center, published a study in the journal " Emotion " exploring what awe can really do for our brains. The group recruited 60 healthy adults in their 60s, 70s, and 80s and split them into two cohorts. Both took a 15-minute walk outdoors once a week for eight weeks. One group got no special instructions, while the other was told to actively find moments of awe on their walk, seeking out novelty, tapping into wonder, and noticing the vastness of things, even in their own neighborhood—all subjective, of course.

"Positive emotions are a whole family of emotions," Sturm shared with me just before I hopped on my flight to Zambia . Sometimes, we lump them all together and just say we're happy, she said, "but that could mean we feel affection or amusement or joy or calm or enthusiasm or love, or awe." The particular slice her study measured, prosocial positive emotions, is its own group of emotions. "They kind of focus our attention outward on others, rather than just on ourselves," she added. "They inspire me to help others, be generous and kind and empathic and humble. So, there are things like compassion and gratitude, and awe and admiration, things like that."

Sturm also asked participants to photograph themselves at the start, middle, and end of each walk. Over the course of the study, those in the awe group gradually filled their frames with less of themselves and more of the scenery around them. "You do feel awe when you are experiencing this kind of vastness," Sturm said. "You feel small, but connected to this larger universe."

As a secondary finding, her team traced the silhouette of every person in every photo and calculated how much of the image was occupied by the person versus the background.

"Over time, we looked to see whether we could literally see a smaller self in the people who took awe walks," she said. "And we did." Their smiles, independently coded by researchers trained in facial analysis, grew measurably more intense, too. Participants in the awe group also reported greater day-to-day increases in prosocial emotions like compassion and gratitude, plus steeper declines in daily sadness and fear, compared to the control group.

"Negative emotions, particularly loneliness, have well-documented negative effects on the health of older adults, particularly those over age 75," Sturm said in a statement following the study's publication in 2020. "What we show here is that a very simple intervention...can lead to significant improvements in emotional well-being."

And all of this—the feeling of gratitude, appreciation for others, and especially for nature—is what I experienced on safari in Zambia and Zimbabwe with Wilderness .

The morning after the elephants, we stood at the edge of Victoria Falls , mist drifting for what felt like a mile in every direction, rainbows weaving in and out of the spray. By the afternoon, we made our way to the Jafuta Foundation , where literacy, farming, and guide training programs, along with support services for women, are funded in part by Children in the Wilderness , the nonprofit arm of Wilderness Safaris. Seeing these initiatives firsthand gave me the very sense of awe Sturm describes: awe inspired by nature, by people's generosity, and by the openness of the Zambians and Zimbabweans.

Then came the rhinos.

In the evening light once more, I found myself walking slowly and silently through the bush between two guides. Step by careful step, we moved through the tall grass until we came upon four rhinos grazing and unhurried. We didn't move, though they knew exactly where we stood, and how fast they could close the distance if they wanted. But they didn't pounce, or frankly seem to care. We'd come in peace, and for whatever reason, they returned it.

By day three, we'd flown 45 minutes north to Linkwasha Camp to meet Peter Gava, a guide with 46 years of experience in the bush and the recent honor of being named Zimbabwe Guide of the Year . He introduced us to the Scorpions, an anti-poaching unit supported by Wilderness that patrols the broader national park, not just the camp's own concession. "If you're a poacher, trust me when I say, if you meet us, you'll wish you had wings to fly away," Collet Ndlovu, one of the unit's members, said while showing me a pair of worn-out shoes left behind by a poacher who attempted to flee. The team covers 6 to 12 miles a day on foot, tracking poachers and their snares. Over more than a decade, their work has saved thousands of animals.

Day four began with a pride of 20 lions, with two cubs wrestling in the grass behind them. From there, we detoured to the Ngamo Clinic , which had opened just days before our arrival with funding from Children in the Wilderness. The facility provides vaccinations for children and prenatal care of expecting mothers in the surrounding villages. By evening, we had found another pride in the middle of a kill, bringing our lion count for the trip to more than 40.

As we sat together in the grasslands in front of a watering hole ringed with elephants , I asked Gava what awe meant to him, especially as someone who must encounter it every day on the job. "I think it's based on the reflection of our hearts," he said. "The other person is looking at you, looking at me, and saying, 'You make me feel special.' Maybe it's their interpretation, or maybe it's by showing them animals, but the overall experience [of a safari] is overwhelming for people. That makes me feel special and feel awe."

None of these things—the visits with the people around the camps, and the animals inside them—are unique to me. They are available for every visitor, no matter their age. However, according to Clement Lawrence , a longtime Wilderness guide trainer who has worked across camps in Namibia and Tanzania, they resonate most with older travelers.

"The tranquillity of the outdoors allows many of us to find a frequency we can relate to," he said. It's a calm, he says, that seems to resonate most with visitors over 50, who tend to move slower at animal encounters and lean more heavily on a guide's ecological knowledge rather than going with a simple Google search.

Sturm's own research helps explain why this age group, in particular, may stand to gain the most. "With aging, people do become more vulnerable to things like cognitive decline and social isolation and less physical activity," she said. "I do think awe is a pretty simple way to encourage improvements in all of those areas because you do feel more connected to people."

However, as Sturm's study showed, you don't need to fly all the way to Zambia and Zimbabwe to find this feeling. "I don't think you need to go on vacation to feel awe," she said. "In everyday life ... you can find it anywhere if you practice a little bit. It's just a little shift of perspective." Simply noticing the world around you instead of your place in it can change how a day feels, and it's a feeling that seems to add up the more you practice it. Of course, this is a bit easier when you're a million miles from home, responsibilities, and an overflowing email inbox, and staring at a lion instead.

​"Something is stirred up that makes us genuinely reflect on new discoveries, but most importantly, we find ourselves looking inward in these quiet moments," Lawrence said of a safari trip. "It's not just a safari at 50; it's a journey that resonates with us until our days reach their end."

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